Xinhua| Editor: Mengjie | December 30, 2017:
When Xu Xiaobo decided to spend all his savings raising cows five years ago, his EMBA classmates thought the real estate tycoon had gone crazy.
Xu, 47, meant what he said. He spent 460 million yuan (70 million U.S. dollars) in Gucheng County, northern China’s Hebei Province, creating a massive pasture for more than 10,000 Australia-imported Holstein cows.
Getting into the dairy industry needs courage in China. The market is dominated by several giants such as Yili and Mengniu, and Chinese consumers are turning to overseas milk products, especially after melamine-tainted baby formula produced by China’s Sanlu Group killed six children and made 300,000 sick in 2008.
Sanlu, once a major dairy producer based in Hebei, went bankrupt after the scandal.
“It does not matter if China has one less real estate developer, but I do hope I can make a difference in China’s dairy industry,” Xu said.
Xu’s decision was partly fueled by an unpleasant incident, when he was kept under investigation for 4 hours by the Hong Kong customs authority in August 2012, as he was he returning to the Chinese mainland carrying eight cans of milk powder for his new-born son. Each person is only allowed to carry two cans.
“How come such a big country as China could not produce safe and affordable milk?” Xu said. He decided to act…
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